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Updated: June 15, 2025
For his mother, and for each of his sisters, Napoleon has also purchased estates, or lands to form estates, in their native island of Corsica. The other near or distant relatives of the Emperor and King have also experienced his bounty. Cardinal Fesch has his hotels at Paris, Milan, Lyons, Turin, and Rome; with estates both in France and Italy.
On my arrival at the ball, I sought and easily found the persons whom his Majesty had designated, and the replies which they made afforded him much amusement when I narrated them as he was retiring. There was at this time a third marriage at the court, that of the Prince de Neuchatel and the Princess of Bavaria, which was celebrated in the chapel of the Tuileries by Cardinal Fesch.
The debates in the Sacred College for and against this journey, and for and against his coronation of Bonaparte, are said to have been long as well as violent, and arranged according to the desires of Cardinal Fesch only by the means of four millions of livres distributed apropos among its pious members.
Either thinking herself not sufficiently paid for her discretion, or enticed by some enemy of the Bonaparte family, she arrived secretly at Lyons in October last year, where she remained unknown until the arrival of the Pope. On the first day His Holiness gave there his public benediction, she found means to pierce the crowd, and to approach his person, when Cardinal Fesch was by his side.
Either thinking herself not sufficiently paid for her discretion, or enticed by some enemy of the Bonaparte family, she arrived secretly at Lyons in October last year, where she remained unknown until the arrival of the Pope. On the first day His Holiness gave there his public benediction, she found means to pierce the crowd, and to approach his person, when Cardinal Fesch was by his side.
Cardinal Fesch, the half-uncle of Napoleon, the Archbishop of Lyons, who had fallen into disgrace with Napoleon for taking the side of the Pope and refusing to accept the see of Paris, to which he was nominated by Napoleon, had retired to Rome in 1814, where he remained till the return of Napoleon, when he went to Paris, and accepted a peerage.
Threats were, indeed, employed personally against the Pope, and bribes distributed to the refractory members of the Sacred College; but it was no secret, either here or at Milan, that Cardinal Fesch had carte blanche with regard to the restoration of all provinces seized, since the war, from the Holy See, or full territorial indemnities in their place, at the expense of Naples and Tuscany; and, indeed, whatever the Roman pontiff has lost in Italy has been taken from him by Bonaparte alone, and the apparent generosity which policy and ambition required would, therefore, have merely been an act of justice.
It was against Cardinal Consalvi, formerly the clever and firm negotiator of the Concordat, that the emperor, assisted by Cardinal Fesch, nursed his suspicions and his anger; he regarded him as systematically hostile to France; but the attachment of the Pope for his minister remained unshakable; it was from Consalvi alone that a voluntary submission might be hoped for.
Such was not the end which the emperor had proposed to himself in convoking the Council, and his wrath towards Cardinal Fesch was violent, as well as towards Boulogne. "I have ever in my heart the oath taken to the Pope, which seemed to me very ill-timed," wrote he to Bigot de Preameneu; "make researches to discover what is meant by this oath, and how the parliaments regarded it.
All were soon in the room, the two little girls, Joseph, and Uncle Joey Fesch, even baby Lucien, who was named for his uncle the canon. The children made a charming group; but they looked at Napoleon with curiosity and surprise, wondering into what new trouble he had fallen.
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